travel information
Tweet and texty
Kristin Virshbo of Castle Rock Associates looks at the
development of Twitter-based travel information services
F
Twitter's messaging ew industries remain in which we don't hear at least some
capability has led buzz about Twitter and how it has the potential to 'really
many organisations
to embrace it as a tool change things'. Yet questions about what exactly Twitter is,
for communicating and what it means for the ITS community, are still commonplace.
with their constituents Conversations about the social, political, cultural and technological
(Picture, Amy Hall,
amyhallphotography.com)
repercussions of Twitter can get rather complex but the service
itself is actually very simple to use: you visit Twitter.com, you pick
a username and you start 'tweeting'.
A tweet is a simple, 140-character text message. You can
create a tweet by visiting Twitter.com, by sending a text message
to Twitter, or by using one of a growing number of third-party
tweeting applications (most of which are free) for computers or
mobile phones. Tweets are published on Twitter's website for the
world to see and they also become part of a collective database of
historical tweets that anyone can access at search.twitter.com.
Twitter is closely tied to SMS (texting) technology. Tweets are
limited to 140 characters in part so they can easily be distributed
as text messages. This is where it gets really interesting. Twitter
allows you to 'follow' the tweets of other users of your choosing.
Once you become someone's follower, their tweets are made
visible to you in an ongoing feed, presented in reverse
chronological order, when you log onto Twitter. You can also sign
up to receive a text message when one of the Twitter users you
are following creates a new tweet. The text message includes the
full 140-character tweet. This makes Twitter, in essence, a
messaging tool.
More than a social networking tool
Twitter might have started out as a social networking service
primarily for individuals but its messaging capability has led many
organisations to embrace it as a tool for communicating with their
constituents. On my personal Twitter account, I follow close
friends and family, the New York Times, a few bloggers who write
about topics that interest me, and several US departments of
transportation. When I log in, I see a stream of recent tweets
from these sources – everything from which film my sister
watched last night, to a Times headline about the elections in
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Afghanistan, to a chirpy promotion for a new mobile website with
ferry schedules created by the Washington State DOT (WSDOT),
to a multi-vehicle accident on a major stretch of Interstate in the
Minneapolis/St. Paul area. While my personal Twitter feed isn't
necessarily representative of the typical user it does give an
indication of the breadth of diverse and current information that
come together on it.
So, what exactly does Twitter mean for the ITS industry? First
and perhaps foremost, it is a powerful platform for carrying
traveller information. Most transportation agencies consider
making current, critical traffic and travel information available to
the public to be among most important services they provide.
Phone services, websites, help desks and fax services have been
cobbled together over the years to help achieve that goal with
varying degrees of success. For some agencies, Twitter is proving
to be a much more immediate, streamlined and interactive way of
doing things.
In its simplest form, a traffic Twitter feed can be a one-way
conversation between a transportation agency and its
constituents. Minnesota recently initiated a Twitter-based service
(full disclosure: my employer, Castle Rock, built the software for
MnDOT) that tweets information about incidents, accidents and
road closures in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro area
(www.twitter.com/mndottraffic) as they happen. The tweets are
created automatically using data from the agency's existing
condition reporting system, requiring no additional data input
from MnDOT personnel. Each tweet includes a brief description
of the incident and includes a link to a map showing its location,
for example: 'MN 3 in both directions, between MN 55 and
Dakota County Road 18 (Inver Grove Heights): road closed.
http://bit.ly/13oVYc'.
Getting current, timely information about road closures and
incidents to the public has benefits that need no justification here.
But on Twitter we can see in real time what people think about
the service because they start tweeting back. Twitter's 'mention'
convention, by which you include a reference to another Twitter
user by prefacing their username with an ampersand, enables
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users to connect tweets into a sort of asynchronous but still real-
time conversation. Recent tweets with @mndottraffic mentions
reveal that people are watching the service from a number of
different perspectives: 'Dang. Lots of accidents happening around
the TC due to the power rain. @mndottraffic'; 'Until I started to
follow @mndottraffic, I didn't realise all the accidents that
happened around here. People! Pay attention!'; 'I don't drive, but
useful: Official Mn/DOT Twitter feed for Minneapolis/St.
Paul/Twin Cities traffic incidents is @mndottraffic'; and
'@mndottraffic what is up with 35E southbound in St Paul??!'.
Two-way traffic
As suggested by the last tweet quoted above, it is also possible for
agencies to use Twitter to have two-way conversations with the
public. WSDOT is one of the more pioneering users of Twitter
(http://twitter.com/wsdot). Browsing the history of WSDOT's
nearly 4,000 tweets since the service started, a remarkable
conversation between the agency and the general public emerges.
People tweet questions, comments and photos to WSDOT about
everything from traffic jams, to WSDOT's website design, to
personal stories about 'snow doughnuts', and the DOT tweets
back. The tone is casual and conversational, and the dynamic
nature of the exchange is immediately apparent when visiting the
feed. WSDOT's Twitter feed now has over 6,000 followers. This
is more a tribute to WSDOT's talented public affairs staff than the
underlying technology itself but there is no denying that Twitter's
unique characteristics make it possible.
A study of MnDOT's But is it safe?
service reveals that
people are watching It should be noted that all of this traffic tweeting has caused some
from a number of people in the US to question whether public agencies ought to be
different perspectives using Twitter at all for real-time traffic updates, citing safety
(Picture, Amy Hall,
amyhallphotography.com)
concerns. As of October 2009, text messaging while driving is
banned in 18 US states and the District of Columbia. Some have
questioned whether real-time traffic tweets from transportation
agencies send a mixed message to drivers, encouraging them to
text while driving.
Billboards raised similar safety concerns when they were first
introduced, as did the more recent 511 traveller information
phone systems which are now operational in all but a few US
states. To counter critics, many DOTs have taken care to brand
all of their real-time traveller information systems with slogans
such as 'know before you go'.
My first reaction is that critics are taking too narrow a view of
what Twitter is and how people use it. Tweets about MnDOT's
feed suggest that people are using the information in a variety of
ways: for general interest; to alert their friends to potential traffic
problems; or to plan a route for a Friday night out before hitting
the road. Some Twitter users have gone so far as to say that they
don't drive personally but still find the traffic tweets useful. In that
same vein, I think the anti-Twitter perspective also overlooks
Twitter's potential to serve users of transit and other modes of
NA 16 November/December 2009
travel information
travel, where people aren't necessarily behind the wheel.
As with other media, there is nothing inherently dangerous
about Twitter. It is no more or less dangerous than the phone-
and web-based traveller information systems most DOTs in the
US have been offering for a decade or longer. These are also
accessible through the web-enabled cell phones that are common
today. As with any source of information, it is up to individuals to
make sure that they access and use it safely and lawfully. To
blame Twitter is, as it were, to blame the messenger.
Targeted tweets and private exchanges
The other big question that comes up with Twitter, especially
insofar as it relates to traffic information applications, is the
signal-to-noise ratio. Of the dozens or even hundreds of traffic
tweets that go out each day, what percentage of them actually
affect any individual follower? Probably no more than a very few.
Although each tweet may be interesting or entertaining in its own
right, how do we make sure that the important stuff – the tweet
that could really spoil your day – doesn't get lost in the noise?
Some agencies have attempted to get round this problem by
creating multiple Twitter accounts. The New York State
Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) recently released its
take on Twitter. Twitter.511ny.org is a web index of 12
NYSDOT Twitter feeds for various regions in the state (for
example, the New York City area, Long Island, Niagara/Buffalo,
Capital Region/Albany, and so on). There are also nine separate
Twitter feeds for following information about the New York City
Subway system by line colour. Clicking on the feed for the red
line, I discovered an array of information including a subway
brake emergency report at the 14th Street station, debris on the
tracks at a couple of locations, and when I could catch the last
train toward the Bronx that evening. The regional traffic feeds
are very similar to the MnDOT Minneapolis/St. Paul Twitter feed
but include an even broader range of information such as
roadwork projects, weather-related events and estimated delays.
While the regional feeds help narrow the information down
somewhat, there is probably still much more available than could
interest a single user. Twitter's search function is often slow. This
makes it cumbersome to (for example) look for a particular road
number within one of the feeds. Also, search functions don't offer
any help for the user who wants to receive tweets through SMS.
For a particular Twitter feed, you must sign up to receive all of
the tweets or none at all.
So far, I have discussed only tweets that are exchanged
publicly. The Twitter platform also includes a mechanism for
sending direct, private messages to a specific user that do not
become part of the public tweet exchange. WSDOT now invites
the public to send private tweet requests to it with a special
command for requesting a travel time between two cities - for
example, 'tt Seattle to Bellevue'. The system then sends a private
tweet back to the user with the current estimated travel time,
including alternative routes where available, so: 'Seattle to
Bellevue: 12 min via I-90 and 12 min via SR 520'. This enables
users to request specific traffic information that will affect them,
when they need it.
We are currently exploring similar designs with MnDOT and
other public transportation agencies for 'next-generation' Twitter-
based services that are centred on the possibilities of private two-
way conversations between the agency and Twitter user. In some
of these early concepts, users can request information for their
particular commutes or routes – not just travel times but also
roadway events. A similar approach makes sense in the transit
world, where the user tweets a bus stop and receives a return
tweet indicating when the next three buses are expected to arrive.
One could also imagine users configuring Twitter profiles, asking
to receive tweets for particular routes during certain times of the
day and on particular days. Such possibilities offer an indication
of where traffic tweeting is headed in the coming year. ■
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